Twenty-Five
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Haunted at night by painful memories of the lives he's taken in war, Booth seeks solace in the one place he's always been able to find it. A birthday drabble for Aly-Fresh1.


**Twenty-Five**

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**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own jack. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

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**A/N:** _A friend and loyal reader, _**Aly-Fresh1 **_(a terrific writer in her own right), celebrates her twenty-fifth birthday today. Being the angst-monkey that she is, I thought I'd convey my birthday wishes in the form of this little drabble of Boothy angst. Aly, I hope you enjoy this. Happy birthday._

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Twenty-five.

Five sets of hashmarks, side by side, all lined up like cordwood—static, immobile, waiting their turn to smolder away into ash. Like cordwood, the pain those hashmarks represent burns away, but in the end, it's only part of it that goes away. The rest remains, transformed into a fine ash that I try to keep contained so that it doesn't settle like dust over everything in my life.

Twenty-five hashmarks. Twenty-five lives. Twenty-five men, killed by my hand—or by my rifle, the long, high velocity reach of my killing hand—and left to empty their blood on the sand, or into the muddy water of an irrigation canal, or soaking into the abstract pattern of the hand-loomed carpet covering the floor of the mud-brick home they died in.

Twenty-five entries scrawled in red ink on my cosmic balance sheet during my seven months in Afghanistan, each one representing a life taken on my own account which I can only hope to balance out with a life I can save now that I'm back home.

Turning my head to the side, I look at her sleeping there next to me. She looks like an angel, her silky hair fanned out over the pillow and her porcelain skin almost glowing in the soft moonlight that shines into our bed from the window. Her mouth hangs open a bit and the sweetest sounds come out of it, raspy little sighs that I've taken to calling her "sleepy noises," which term makes her laugh and blush when I say it.

She says I've already more than made up for the lives I took in Afghanistan by those which I've saved in pulling murderers off the streets before they could kill again. In a way, I guess, maybe she's right, but I'm not sure that the stain I carry on my conscience, and the ache I feel in my heart when I think about the things I did over there, will fade until I know that every one of the lives I've taken by my hand has been offset by a life I've saved by my very own hand.

She's told me again and again that I am a good man and that I am not stained, that I am not tarnished by the things I have done.

Still, some nights, I wake up in a cold sweat, my nostrils tingling with the metallic smell of blood, and I can't rid my mind of it.

She's there to wrap her arm around my waist and lay a soft, tender kiss on my shoulder. She doesn't say anything, but just holds me, and lets me feel her warm, smooth skin against mine. I think, she knows somehow that I feel stained, and that just feeling her there, wrapped around me in love in the quiet of night, makes me feel more grounded, as if all the things I've done and all the lives I've taken haven't stained me beyond recognition, or damaged me beyond redemption.

The images—and the sounds and the smells, and the feel of the weapon's recoil—creep up on me in the small hours of the morning when sleep eludes me. It's not every night. But once in a while, I feel it, first as an ache and a tightness in my chest and then as a sensation that, for lack of a better term, makes my skin crawl. It is not enough to close my eyes, because the images, the feelings, the sensations, remain.

I try to fight it, though. I take a deep breath and roll over onto my side, curling my legs up and nuzzling my face into my pillow as I let that breath out as slowly as I can, trying to feel the muscles in my chest and belly relax, one by one, as I squeeze out that breath. I try not to think about anything but my breath, the way the air feels in my nostrils and throat as it's pushed up from my chest by my diaphragm.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a hazy thought swirls again, like smoke, and I see a fuzzy image of blood-soaked sand flash before my closed eyes. I push the thought and the image away as I open my eyes and focus on the swaying silhouette of the old oak tree cast on the wall by the light of the full moon.

_I'm okay,_ I tell myself, drawing in another relaxing breath as I feel slender fingers snaking under the sheet and over the edge of my naked hip.

"It's okay," she murmurs, pulling herself next to me so I feel her breasts against my back and her thighs pressed snugly behind mine.

I close my eyes and try to sink into sleep, soaking in the warmth of her body and blanketing myself in the feel of her curled around me. I feel her lips brush across my shoulder blade and I remind myself that, while I may be stained, I am recognizable, and that I may be damaged, but I am redeemable. I may feel anguish, but I am never alone, right?

"Shhh," I hear her say, her sleepy voice a whisper against my skin.

I reach my hand back and I close my fingers around hers, squeezing her hand as I pull it towards the center of me. I feel her thumb press against my navel and I smile into the darkness.

"Mmm..."

My murmur is swallowed up by the soft embrace of the down pillow. The last sound I hear before I succumb to sleep is the sound of my own sigh.

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**A/N:** _It isn't much, but I hope you liked it anyway. _

_Let me know what you thought of that. Share your thoughts, as I've shared mine. Leave a review. _

_Thanks for reading!_


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